More smoke

Preparing for a cookout in the Abbey courtyard earlier this summer -- something we don't do when conditions are very dry and fire danger correspondingly high.

In an earlier post we spoke of the occasional scent of wood smoke from wildfires -- often quite distant. But on September 4, our idyllic Sunday afternoon was disrupted by evidence of a fire much closer to our Abbey. A great plume of smoke was visible to the west, especially from the higher ground closer to the highway. We heard the reassuring sound of sirens as emergency vehicles rushed to the scene -- near the Starwood Trail on public land, as we later learned, so the blaze was dubbed the Starwood Fire.

As some Sisters telephoned around for news, others hustled the cattle down to the hayfields along the creek, where the grass is moist and green. The cattle were certainly happy about it, and looked beautiful against the green, in the evening light of late summer.

Providence -- and fast work by firefighters -- kept the fire  to a very modest 300 acres. Last we heard, it was quite contained, and had caused no injuries or damage to buildings. We even had some rain overnight a few days later -- not so great in quantity, but slow and gentle, so that it soaked in to the dry land and vegetation.